News
Microsoft Rakes in Public Sector Cloud Deals
- By Paul McCloskey
- February 24, 2011
Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it has recently signed contracts with over a dozen state and local government entities for its cloud computing services.
Fourteen new deals were signed within the past few weeks, the company said, resulting in a total of 190 state and local government organizations using Microsoft cloud solutions. These include the state departments of labor in Idaho and Colorado, as well as government organizations in the cities of Chicago, Alexandria, Va. and Virginia Beach, Va.
More than 3 million government employees currently use the company's online business services, Microsoft said.
The contracts, especially those with local governments, are coming at the rate of about one a week, said Gail Thomas-Flynn, Microsoft's vice president of U.S. state and local government, at Microsoft's Public Sector CIO Summit this week in Bellevue, Wash. Thomas-Flynn attributed the company's success in part to the flexibility it provides customers in deciding which services to send to the cloud and which to maintain on-site.
Furthermore, "they [public sector organizations] know we're in this for the long haul," Thomas-Flynn said at Microsoft's Public Sector CIO Summit this week in Bellevue, Wash. "This notion that suddenly [service] features can be pulled out at a whim -- government is an enterprise, and at the end of the day, you can't run with uncertainty."
The other recent deals cover services for Winston-Salem, N.C.; King County, Wash.; Washington state's Sound Transit; Andover, Minn.; Vernon Hills, Ill.; Lake Buena Vista, Fla.; the Michigan State Senate; Carlsbad, Calif.; and the tribal government of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama.
About the Author
Paul McCloskey is editor-in-chief of Government Computer News magazine.